Anse Chung=Khodorovsky?

Some belated comments on the telehub debacle.
It seems to me that the removal of the telehubs, while probably desirable in terms of convenience for the regular SL user, has seriously damaged business confidence in SL, in a manner analagous to RL.
In Russia, the imprisonment of the oligarch Khodorovsky, the Vladimir Putin, seriously damaged investor confidence in Russia. They simply don't want to invest in a country where the state may arbitarily seize their assets.
The telehub debacle, is similar. SL effectively devalued the assets of the SL oligarchs. The parralells are striking-a number of risk-seeking investors buy up state assets cheap, public resentment and state frustration with this profit-taking at the expense of the community leads them to take dictatorial, repressive action against those individuals.

Now, if all this sounds like abstract political theory, lets take a practical example. A well-financed investor enters SL, identifies a profit opportunity. However, in order to exploit this profit opportunity he/she requires a maximum tier of land, so the investment isn't negligble. It is going to cost thousands of dollars in fact. He attempts to measure his potential gain-the calculations are simple-he must make 11 L per day per 512 sq m parcel of land to profit. He is confident that, even if not now, SL will one day have an economy that will allow him to do this.
But-as with every profit opporunity there is factor X. There is the chance SL will just fold, or be replaced by something else. Currently that probability seems quite small-SL is just too damn exciting to simply collapse in on itself. More likely if a big player like Microsoft decided to enter the game, they would just buy up SL, and there the dividends would be spectacular for Landholders. So, factor X seems manageable.
Then, the telehubs are removed. At a stroke, telehub land owners lose hundreds of thousands of Lindens. Suddently factor X comes sharply in focus-arbitary decisions by the state could remove your profit at a stroke.

Of course, SL could go in the direction of a socialist-type economy. People could just create content for the sake of creation. That is not an idea without merit.
But, to misquote Adam Smith, it is not from benevolence that the builder, the scripter, the avatar-maker draws their motivation, but with regard to their own self-interest.

My suggestion would be to only make seismic changes like this infrequently, when absolutely neccessary, clearly signposted in advance, with compensation awarded to all individuals affected by said changes (as SL seems to have done in this case).

Whose alt are you? If you can't tell, why did you feel the need to post using an alt instead of your main character, or at least a character who has posted more recently and more than twice? Just curious.

But as to your concerns, any business possesses some kind of risk and the TOS explains that very clearly. It would be foolhardy of SL to make such a promise that nothing would ever change. And even more foolhardy to assure compensation if a change affects some one.

In retrospect, I don't think anyone was that negatively impacted.

And people still invest in Russia.

Good points Green, and ones that were often lost in the (extensive and heated) telehub/compensation debate.

If LL is to attract RL businesses to SL who will invest in land and provide rich content experiences then those RL businesses need to have confidence that the value of their investment won't disappear in a puff of smoke because of some arbitrary decision by LL. Current SL entrepreneurs also need to feel confidence in LL's decisions or they'll migrate to other virtual worlds and leave SL the poorer for it.

However, LL needs to be able to make changes to SL in order to respond to consumer demand and put SL ahead of the competition.

How to reconcile these contradictory drivers? As you suggest, 'reasonable' lead times for major changes and some consideration of whether compensation is appropriate.

One your other point, it *would* have been really interesting if SL had gone in a 'socialist' direction rather than the capitalist path they've embarked on but I think that ship has sailed now!

What is interesting tho is that many creative residents are motivated not by the financial gain they may make but by the desire to produce goods and services that are respected by their peers. (How else do we explain the excellent goods provided free or for 1L$ by creative types such as those involved in GNU?) I guess you could describe this as another form of 'self-interest', status accumulation rather than capital accumulation.

There's a fascinating culture clash often battled out on these forum pages between the 'capitalist' and 'creative' camps. (Yeah, I know capitalists can be creative and vice versa. I'm just trying to summarise these world views with a shorthand we can all relate to, honest)

There's a good article about this culture clash and the future inhabitants of SL on Gwyeth Llewellyn's blog:

http://secondlife.game-host.org/article50visual1layout1.html

So, in a gist, there should be a feature freeze on SL because some people have chosen to invest today rather than tomorrow?

Is that the point of this?

Interesting commentary.

I think 'factor X' may also be influenced by these:

factor Y: Competition. Forcing either rapid, seismic changes or loss of residents.

factor Z: Innovation. When this world is 'oh-so-2005', change may have to be fast.



One other very interesting point: rapid change will *help* people like Anshe in the long run. She adapts her business quickly and has the nerve and resources to follow through.

The timid, or the inexperienced businesspeople are really the ones that are ultimately hurt by turmoil.


Last comment on a more personal level - the possibility of seismic change makes the game more interesting, but won't alter my personal goals in the least.

I'm no Anshe, but I see market uncertainty as something that kills off competition faster than it kills off me. In that situation, the bold win.

the repetitive argument circles spin round and round

SL is a highly risky fledgling culture and economy that needs the ability to evolve or it will stagnate and die. And that includes being willing to lose individual participants along the way, if it serves long term interest.

We have plenty of entrepreneurial activity in SL. The main dampeners on bigger projects are total market size and platform issues (i.e. technological stability, performance and feature set still has to progress), not feature changes or risk of LL co-option.

And creating a policy and culture of compensation for those affected by every change in SL would be a debilitating move. Not to mention the fact that LL's method of compensation is to pass the cost on to the community as a whole (by creating more currency).

The GOM situation had a much bigger effect on business confidence than the hub situation. I was a necessary move from LL's perspective, but it certainly put a dampener on projects working to fill in the gaps of LL's technology. But LL can't hold the client and their business captive to projects that should, fundamentally, be built into the platform.

It is an interesting question, however: when to let the community and world at large that big moves like this are planned for release.

Secondlife is still like a little baby, lots of potential and we as caretakers see a bright future already, but for SL to mature it will have to grow and change, and with that will be pains, those might be unpleasant but in the end their will be a mature platform for us all to enjoy. And we will be seen as pioneers of a new frontier.

First, thanks, what a lot of smart and interesting people the SL community has. I rarely see discussion of this quality anywhere online.

In response to the poster who seems to think I am someone else, I am no one but me, Green Panther. I am relatively new as an active participant on SL, but have been investigating this new frontier quite intensively of late. I have no agenda except a broad desire to see SL succeed. I am certainly not shilling for land barons if that is what you think, I fully understand why people don't like them.

To those who are saying change is neccessary in a fledgling project like SL, this is true within limits. The GOM situation I didn't mention for that reason-yes it had a probably more significant effect than telehub removal, but seemed unavoidable. (Though I hope SL considers or already has renumerated the people the creation of the Lindex hurt financially).

However, a business enviroment requires stablility, it cannot exist in a state of perpetual flux. If you buy a china elephant for your mantelpiece for an agreed sum, you need to be reasonably certain it will not morph into a wooden tiger on the bus home.

Well, I guess the point is that noone should pursue long term goals in SL.
Or if anyone does, beware of the high risks!

If you're a creator, who want to make a living from SL, beware of the risk.

The safest way is to regard SL as a hobby, and make product, stuff for enjoyment, and for offseting the tier costs. Then you can't fall too hard.

well green, my perspective is to take a look at an RL example -- one even more extreme. Examine Microsoft as a platform provider. Now here is a company that is incredibly predatory... LL is like a puppy dog wearing mittens in comparison. They co-opt complementary / add-on products all the time and build them into the operating system.

Now everybody knows that if you build a product that is an add-on to the operating system, you stand a very good chance of losing your business when Microsoft expands their feature set in your direction. (side note: the reality is that customers tend to move slow so you don't lose everyone at once)

You'd think this would stop entrepreneurs, but it doesn't, even though it may keep them from attracting VC money. No, people build businesses around microsoft all the time. Their partner list is HUGE... naturally because for a period of time, there is good money to be made.

So LL needs to focus long term on what will grow the market here. Personally I don't believe at this stage of the system's lifecycle (i.e. infancy) that kowtowing to a particular set of businesses makes much sense. I think that's a recipe for letting a competitor come in with greater flexibility who will eat your lunch.

p.s. No, I don't dislike the land barons.

p.p.s. And no, I do not think GOM received compensation, and as much as I thought that was a nice little business, I do not think they deserved compensation either. With a few exceptions, there are no guarantees in entrepreneurship, and when there are... when the state or the community tries to provide a guarantee, you have nothing more than a recipe for disaster, deception, and bankruptcy.

How can someone who wrote a post that long Mispell Anshe for Anse?